Team Data: Consadole Sapporo
Team Name:
Team Logo & Mascot:  
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Home Uniform Away Uniform
 
Home StadiumSapporo Dome
Seats 42,300 (World Cup venue)
Team Data:
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Management Corporation: | The Hokkaido Football Club Co., Ltd. | |
Established: | 16 April 1996
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President: | Yoshiaki Tanaka
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Investors: | Consortium of approximately 80 local companies | |
Address: | 42-5 Higashi 3-chome, Kita 9-jo,
Higashi-ku, Sapporo City,
Hokkaido 060-0909 | |
Hometown Area: | Sapporo City, Hokkaido | |
Home Stadium(s): | Sapporo Atsubetsu Park Stadium (capacity: 20,005)
Sapporo Dome (capacity: 42,300) | |
Joined J. League: | 1998 |
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 | Dole-kun
Consadole Sapporo's mascot is modeled on the Blakiston's Fish Owl -- the largest owl in Japan and a very well-known denizen of Hokkaido. In the west, owls have a reputation for wisdom, but not particularly for qualities like ferocity or energy. However, the owl is viewed in Japan as a symbol of luck, or fate, and that is presumably why Dole-kun was chosen to represent Consadole .
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Consadole Sapporo, located in Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan, was the last team to join the J1 via promotion from the JFL, entering at the start of the fateful 1998 season. When relegation was introduced at the end of that season, Sapporo was demoted to the second division (J2), where it languished for two years before winning promotion back to the J1 at the end of the 2000 season. But Consadole was never able to play on an even keel, and after one year of reasonably strong performances, they were relegated for a second time in 2002. As the team begins to put itself back together and prepare for a third bid at promotion, it seems like Consadole has gone through a great deal in just a short period of time. However, the club was actually formed before any other professional football organization that is currently active in Japan. It does not have the same unbroken history of participation in domestic leagues enjoyed by Sanfrecce Hiroshima, which is officially viewed as the "oldest professional club", but then, that seems to be in keeping with the inconsistent nature of the team that persists even today.
Consadole Sapporo can trace its roots back to the Toshiba corporate soccer club, which was established in 1935. The club took part in several pre-war tournaments, but was disbanded between 1940 and 1949. Until the mid 1970s, it was simply a company club, and took part in no national competitions. Then, in 1976, it entered the national regional football league, and won promotion to the JSL second division just a years later, and won the championship of that league in 1979. In 1988, after again winning the second division championship, the team was promoted to the first division, where it took part in the creation of the J.League and JFL in 1993. To meet the requirements for J.League entry, the team incorporated as the Hokkaido Football Club in 1996, taking the name "Consadole Sapporo".
Consadole's first trip to the first division was quite a disappointment. The team was still quite young, organisationally speaking, and did not attract enough fans to avoid severe financial losses. In an ill-considered attempt to drum up fan support, Sapporo signed Diego Maradona's younger brother, Hugo, who may have had the Maradona name and face, but clearly did not take after his brother in terms of playing ability. After crashing out of the top division in 1998, Sapporo had another discouraging year in 1999, and looked to be on the road to the cellar of the division.
The credit for turning the team around in 2000 has to be awarded mainly to Takeshi Okada, the former national team coach who resigned in disgrace after Japan's poor performance in the 1998 World Cup. As is discussed elsewhere on this site, Okada is a very talented coach who happened to get the wrong job at the wrong time in his career. Many wrote him off after the World Cup, but the Hokkaido football club decided to give him a chance to redeem his own reputation and to restore the team's fortunes. Okada's aggressive pressing style and ability to develop young players carried Sapporo to the top of the J2 in 2000.
Following the team's recovery to the top-flight division, however, the lack of cash and player talent made it difficult for even Okada to maintain a winning record. The team floundered in 2001, finishing in the lower half of the table. Coach Okada stepped down at the end of the 2001 season, perhaps partly due to exhaustion as he desperately tried to achieve positive results with an understrength team.
Prior to the 2002 season, the team again conducted a major housecleaning. Tetsuji Hashiratani, a former national team defender and team captain, took over the coaching reins, but he faced the same thankless task that confronted Okada. After just seven matches, Hashiratani was sent packing, having won only a single match. The downward spiral turned into a free-fall. In 2003, Consadole slipped to a depressing ninth-place finish, but they still had not plumbed the depths of despair. The team conducted a complete sell-off of talent at the end of 2003, as new management took over and the team began rebuilding virtually from scratch. Unfortunately, this left the team looking like a bunch of scruffy schooboys (which is essentially what they were), and they finished dead last in 2004.
Even so, Consadole remained one of the better-supported teams in the J2, and the ticket revenues remained high through thick and through thin. The cash flow allowed Consadole to acquire talented players, including local boys like ex-Antlers Junji Nishizawa and Tomohiko Ikehata, and goalkeeper Tetsuya Abe. This fuelled another renaissance, and Consadole began climbing through the table in 2005 and 2006. The addition of a star scorer at the start of the 2007 season -- Davi do Nascimento -- finally put them over the top, and the Snow Owls won their third J2 title while securing a return to the J1 in 2008.
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